Laudine: the Old Wedis Sh Herr Ivan Adapts a Character from Chretien's Yvain Joseph M

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New Research: Yearbook for the Society of Medieval Germanic Studies Volume 1 Issue 1 New Research in Medieval German Studies: Article 3 The Yearbook of the Society for Medieval German Studies

5-2009 Laudine: The Old wediS sh Herr Ivan Adapts a Character from Chretien's Yvain Joseph M. Sullivan University of Oklahoma

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Recommended Citation Sullivan, Joseph M. (2009) "Laudine: The Old wS edish Herr Ivan Adapts a Character from Chretien's Yvain," New Research: Yearbook for the Society of Medieval Germanic Studies: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: http://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/smgs/vol1/iss1/3

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Research: Yearbook for the Society of Medieval Germanic Studies by an authorized administrator of University of Minnesota Morris Digital Well. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LAUDINE: THE OLD SWEDISH HERR IVAN ADAPTS A CHARACTER FROM CHRÉTIEN’S YVAIN1

Joseph M. Sullivan University of Oklahoma

ompleted in 1303, the Old Swedish Herr Ivan is an adaptation of Chrétien de Troyes’ late-twelfth-century Yvain, ou le Chevalier au CLion. Also known in the scholarship as Hærra Ivan and Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren, the text is one of three anonymously composed courtly narratives that scholars collectively term the Eufemiavisor (i.e. Eufemia songs), after the German-born Queen of Norway who commissioned the three stories as gifts for Duke Erik Magnusson, the fiancé of Eufemia’s daugh- ter Ingeborg and brother of the Swedish king.2 For its part, Herr Ivan not only had significant influence on the subsequent medieval Swedish literary tradition,3 but also, and of immense significance to Arthurian studies, the text is one of the three lengthy, medieval verse adaptations of Yvain, which include also the fourteenth-century Middle English Ywain and Ga- wain and Hartmann von Aue’s masterful circa 1200 Iwein, both texts to which this essay will make reference.4 As such, Herr Ivan is a romance critical to both the understanding of the larger medieval Ywain tradition and for our knowledge of how medieval poets adapted foreign Arthurian texts into their own languages. While researchers have long mined both the Middle High German and Middle English versions of the tale for what they can tell us about Chrétien’s Yvain, and although those scholars have long appreciated the artistry and uniqueness of Hartmann and the anonymous Middle English redactor, the same is not true for Herr Ivan and its author. Surprisingly, there has been little research on this highly important romance since the Second World War.5 Most of the pre-war scholarship is of a philological and stylistic nature, and thus says relatively little about what arguably most interests current scholars of medieval Arthurian literature, namely, the development of theme, motif, and character. Moreover, the little post-war scholarship on the text has continued to concentrate on philological and stylistic matters and has promoted the opinio communis that Herr Ivan lacks originality and that its poet added little to his source material.6 This notion, however, is of questionable merit; Herr Ivan, in fact, Old Swedish Herr Ivan 51 innovates greatly. Such is especially apparent at the thematic level, where an active adapter significantly adjusts major motifs, thematic strands, and individual characters to accord with his own coherent, narrative conception and to appeal to his Swedish audience. Active innovation appears in such diverse and important thematic areas as, for instance, Herr Ivan’s treatment of the age-of-life topos and in its extensive redrawing, vis-à-vis Chrétien’s Yvain. The author also takes liberties with the representation of rulership and government, the exercise of political power, and the relationship of spouses in a political marriage.7 While there is no good evidence that the Old Swedish poet had any direct knowledge of Hartmann’s Iwein,8 Herr Ivan is a romance of great potential interest also for Hartmann scholars. Although the Old Swedish poet changes his source material in different ways than Hartmann, he typically changes that material in the same places as does the Middle High German master (or for that matter, as does the Middle English Ywain and Gawain poet). Therefore, systematic comparison of Herr Ivan’s innovations with those in Iwein holds the potential to shed new light on the thematic and characterological changes in the Middle High German text. I will mention here just a few of the numerous important instances of common innovation between Hartmann’s text and the Old Swedish. Thus, both texts rehabilitate vis-à-vis Chrétien’s original the role of noble counsel in decision making.9 Additionally, both adapters present Calogrenant and the wild herdsman who guides him to the Landuc fountain more positively.10 Moreover, both poets are arguably less critical than Chrétien had been in their presentation of Arthur and his court.11 Both authors take a more favorable view of that time of life medieval culture viewed as youth.12 And key characters emerge in a more positive light. Such is the case, for example, with Gawain; in both Hartmann’s and the Old Swedish poet’s adaptations, the advice which that knight gives the hero to convince him to leave Laudine and to ride in tournaments is far more measured than it had been in Chrétien’s Yvain.13 And Laudine’s chief lady-in-waiting, Lunete, comes in for a major redrawing in the hands of both Germanic redactors, appearing more respectful of her social superiors and considerably less conniving than she had in Yvain.14 The present essay seeks to contribute to a greater understanding of theme, motif, and character in Herr Ivan by focusing in on one of the tale’s two central woman figures, the lady Laudine.15 As is the case in 52 Old Swedish Herr Ivan

Hartmann’s Iwein, Laudine in Herr Ivan comes in for a significant redrawing of Chrétien’s original character.16 It is a primary goal of this essay to demonstrate that the Old Swedish poet presents a Laudine who is more restrained in her emotions than Chrétien’s Laudine, and thus is especially capable of making an important political, state decision. Additionally, in the manner she accepts Ivan as husband and then urges her nobles to take him as their leader, she demonstrates more exemplary political behavior than had Laudine in Yvain. It will also be shown that despite such positive representation of Laudine in Herr Ivan, the Old Swedish poet nevertheless makes his Laudine more responsible for the hero’s ongoing difficulties than she had been in Chrétien’s original, making essential to her character the major sin of pride.

Background While both Chrétien and his Old Swedish adaptor unfold Laudine’s personality throughout the entire course of the tale, it is in the early stages of the narrative where that personality takes on its most basic contours. It is particularly in what this essay will call the “Landuc section” of the tale—that is, that part of the tale revolving around the hero’s intrusion into Laudine’s territory, his defeat in combat of her first husband, and in Laudine and the hero’s courtship and marriage—that the significant differences between how the Old Swedish and Old French versions present both Laudine and the husband-defender of her land manifest themselves most greatly.17 The relevant action in both Old French and Old Swedish versions of the Landuc section is as follows: Yvain/Ivan’s kinsman and fellow knight of Arthur’s court, Calogrenant—Kalogrevanz in the Old Swedish—has related a story about an adventure during which he was disgraced. Having ridden to a magical fountain, he enters battle with its defender, Laudine’s husband, Esclados the Red, Wadein the Red [Vadein røþe] (v. 566) in the Old Swedish adaptation. That red knight utterly defeats and thereby shames Calogrenant/Kalogrevanz. After hearing Calogrenant/Kalogrevanz’s story, Yvain/Ivan travels himself to the fountain, battles the Red Knight, and mortally wounds him. Following the dying warrior to his and Laudine’s castle, Yvain/Ivan is trapped within its walls. There, Laudine laments the death of her husband, while her chief lady-in-waiting, Lunete—Luneta in the Old Swedish—shields Yvain/Ivan from Laudine’s angry people and counsels Laudine to take the hero as new Old Swedish Herr Ivan 53 husband and defender. Eventually, Laudine and Yvain/Ivan reconcile and go before Laudine’s assembled nobles to obtain their consent for marriage.18 Although the necessity that drives Laudine to undertake the almost unthinkable acceptance of her husband’s killer as new spouse is urgent in both Old French and Old Swedish versions, in the Old Swedish rewriting the stakes in that decision emerge as higher and the significance of the potential husband as accordingly greater. More specifically, while Chrétien’s text treats both Laudine’s former husband, the Red Knight, and future husband, Yvain, primarily as defenders of a mere custom—a type of hired gun who protects what is essentially Laudine’s polity—the Old Swedish text presents its Ivan more as an actual ruler. Since I have recently discussed this in great detail elsewhere,19 I give below just a few examples illustrating this thorough and most basic recharacterization of Laudine’s husband’s responsibilities. Most important to the shift in focus of Laudine’s husband’s roles, the Old Swedish text expunges all reference to custom in the Landuc section and instead refers over and over again to the husband’s responsibility to rule and to protect a realm or country. In Chrétien’s original, Laudine’s chief counselor—her lady-in-waiting Lunete—advises her mistress alternately to obtain a knight to protect “vostre terre” [your lands] (v. 1619) and the need of that warrior’s presence “Por la costume maintenir / de vostre fontainne desfandre” [In order to maintain the custom of defending your spring] (vv. 1852-53). Lunete’s comments, referring both to custom and to country, are typical for the Landuc section in the Old French original, where there exists considerable ambiguity in the husband’s functions; indeed, Chrétien does not preference the husband’s position as ruler and defender of a country over that of an upholder of a long-observed—but nevertheless mere—custom. In all, his version of the Landuc section refers to the defense or rulership of a country or realm four times and refers to the defense of the fountain or custom also four times.20 For its part, however, the Old Swedish adaptation of the Landuc section conspicuously avoids the language of custom and absolutely hammers home the necessity of defense or rulership of a country by referring to country or realm a full eleven times.21 Thus, with Arthur threatening to attack, Old Swedish Luneta counsels her mistress to find a husband “landit þor for honum væria” [to defend the country against him (i.e. Arthur)] (v. 1364). Similarly, Laudine’s seneschal explains to her assembled nobles that 54 Old Swedish Herr Ivan the lady needs a husband “þær hænna rike styra ma” [who can rule her country (my emphasis)] (v. 1596), just as he articulates seeing in Ivan their desperately needed new leader, or “forman” (vv. 1573 and 1560). And when Laudine, with Arthur’s invasion looming, asks Ivan if he is willing “mit land for honum væria” [to defend my realm against him (i.e. Arthur)] (vv. 1523-26), Ivan replies “iak trøster mik þæt fulvæl at gøre / Iþart land at væria” [I believe myself fully capable of defending your country (my emphasis)] (vv. 1528-29). Just as the clarification of Laudine’s husband’s role is essential to the Old Swedish poet’s rewriting of the Landuc section, so too is the redrawing of Laudine herself integral to the segment emerging as a discourse on the proper exercise of power. With his Laudine, the Old Swedish poet lessens, vis-à-vis his Old French exemplar, the intensity of the character’s emotional state. In so doing, Laudine arguably becomes more capable of wielding political power. That exercise of political power comes to a head in one single state decision, namely, the choice of a new husband, Ivan. That decision, probably the most important political decision in both Chrétien’s and the Old Swedish versions, is arguably of relatively even more significance in the Old Swedish rewriting, since it, as we have seen, adamantly drives home Laudine’s husband’s primary purpose as ruler of her land. For understanding the importance of Laudine’s emotional state and, in particular, her grief over her slain first husband and the place that grief occupies in opening a space for her to develop as a character, recent research on mourning and gender is highly useful. As April Henry has argued in her recent Ph.D. dissertation on mourning in Middle High German courtly texts from about 1200, the “absence of their husbands” allows grieving female characters to come to the foreground and “to emerge as subjects” in otherwise male-dominated narratives. Indeed, the performance of often conventional and ritualized mourning serves the important narrative purpose of allowing female characters to “gain access to agency,”22 which we might perhaps best understand as the capacity and license to act in spheres, such as those dominated by men, to which they might not ordinarily have access. Such is exactly the case with Laudine in all the versions of the Ywain tale mentioned in this essay. Thus, her first husband’s sudden and violent passing provides a liminal moment in which Laudine may step forward and, at least until she remarries, take on the role of sovereign, responsible for the welfare of her realm. Furthermore, in Old Swedish Herr Ivan 55 her performance of mourning, in acting out what Henry calls the “socially defined role of the lamenting lady,” Laudine not only finds her voice as ruler but also performs a socially conditioned ritual that gives her court a starting point to negotiate its way through the thorny political problems surrounding the loss of the Red Knight and the location of his replacement. While in both Yvain and Herr Ivan Laudine falls into a state of tremendous grief when the hero kills her first husband, the portrayal of that mourning phase differs according to the level of importance that the Old French text and the Old Swedish rewriting assign to the role of madness in her grief. Thus the Old French text implies that madness has driven Laudine to suicidal thoughts when she first learns of Esclados’ death. The narrator reports, “de duel feire estoit si fole / qu’a po qu’ele ne s’ocioit” [she was so crazed with grief she was on the verge of killing herself] (vv. 1150-51), and “ausi come fame desvee / se comançoit a dessirier / et ses chevols a detranchier” [like a madwoman she began clawing at herself and tearing out her hair] (vv. 1156-58). And a little later, when it turns out that her people have been unable to find Esclados’ killer, we learn that “Por ce tel duel par demenoit / la dame, qu’ele forssenoit, / et crioit come fors del san” [Because of this the lady was so grief-stricken that she quite lost her mind, and cried out as if she were mad] (vv. 1203-05). By contrast, the Old Swedish text edits such explicit madness out of Laudine’s grieving. Thus, although the Old Swedish text does, indeed, mention of its Laudine that “at stundum vilde hon draepe sik” [at times she wanted to kill herself] (v. 1076), there is importantly neither here nor elsewhere any suggestion that insanity is at play in her emotional state. The mere fact that the Old Swedish and Old French versions demonstrate such difference in their portrayal of the heroine’s mourning is not wholly surprising. As the more recent research on mourning argues, older scholarship’s tendency to view mourning in courtly texts as a more or less static construct needs to be revised.23 Thus Elke Koch in her magisterial dissertation on mourning points to “die Differenzierheit von Trauerdarstellungen” as characteristic of medieval courtly texts and notes that “Diese Vielschichtigkeit erschließt sich insbesondere darin, wenn Trauer als Performanz von Identität in den Blick genommen wird.”24 In a text such as Herr Ivan, where the poet modifies important aspects of the original throughout his adaptation, and in which he seems concerned to draw a Laudine with a strong identity and distinct character profile, it is 56 Old Swedish Herr Ivan perhaps only to be expected that he would feel comfortable adjusting some contours of her mourning. The conspicuous absence of madness in Laudine’s lament begs the question, however, of why the Old Swedish poet avoided it. We might first observe that his comfort in eliminating insanity from what is a rather conventional representation of grief in Yvain is possibly connected to an incomplete reception into medieval Scandinavia of continental notions of courtly love; in medieval courtly literature, of course, the fully elaborated lament is often a critical component in the larger discourse of courtly love, demonstrating the love of the mourner for the mourned lover. Speaking in favor of such a hypothesis is, for instance, the fact that the West Norse Ívens saga—whose earliest (non-extant) version probably dates from the mid-thirteenth century and from which the Old Swedish poet borrows material—also avoids, in its extant versions, explicit reference to insanity in Laudine’s mourning. In so doing, Ívens saga is typical of what William Ian Miller has noted as the aversion of the Old Norse sagas “to indulge themselves in emotion talk”, 25 for example, of the type that is so prevalent in high medieval continental courtly literature. As Barbara Rosenwein has argued in her important work on medieval “emotional communities,” the attitudes people held towards the full spectrum of emotions was anything but a static construct in the Middle Ages but rather differed from place to place and from time to time.26 That the author of the Ívens saga (and perhaps also the Herr Ivan author) would eliminate such a charged emotional state as insanity from their heroine’s mourning thus might be viewed as an attempt to adjust to the expectations of Scandinavian audiences, that is, to distinctly Scandinavian emotional communities. Speaking against the possibility, however, that Herr Ivan derives license from the Ívens saga to erase insanity from Laudine’s mourning, is the fact that Herr Ivan seems to borrow only sporadically, and quite selectively from Ívens saga.27 Moreover, Ívens saga significantly abridges the text inherited from Chrétien. The Herr Ivan poet, by contrast, retains the approximate volume of Chrétien’s original,28 and would have been unlikely to cut material where the saga version had done so to reduce length. Another possible explanation for the Old Swedish adaptor’s elimination of madness from Laudine’s grief lies in the large amount of time elapsed between the publication of Chrétien’s Yvain—as early as the 1160s—and the completion of Herr Ivan in 1303. It is quite possible that a Old Swedish Herr Ivan 57 later medieval writer, like the Herr Ivan poet, composing on the geographical fringes of Northern Europe, would have a diminished appreciation for all the aspects of conventional representations of grief common in late-twelfth and early-thirteenth-century continental courtly literature. Thus his elimination of madness may, to some extent, reflect a lack of appreciation for insanity in Chrétien’s depiction of Laudine’s grief. While this hypothesis remains a distinct possibility, the comparative evidence from the larger European Ywain corpus does not allow us to accept it in any kind of totality; rather, that evidence would indicate that the Old Swedish poet’s elimination of madness was calculated and not a case of negligence. Specifically, we may also observe that Hartmann von Aue, who adapts the tale for his own continental audience within decades of Yvain’s composition, and who clearly had a good grasp both of the notions of courtly love and the conventional representations of mourning prevalent in contemporaneous Old French courtly narrative, also conspicuously avoids making the vocabulary of insanity part of Laudine’s grief.29 When we consider, moreover, the Herr Ivan text as a whole and its possible authorship, the less likely it appears that the poet’s modification of Laudine’s mourning stemmed from an under-appreciation of courtly love and/or conventional representations of grief in courtly literature and the more possible it seems that his elimination of madness from Laudine’s mourning was intentional and conscious. Indeed, our poet seems firmly in control of his material throughout his adaptation, and the weight of recent Herr Ivan scholarship assumes that he was a learned man, one of the growing number of Swedish clerics to spend considerable time training in France30—a trend that starts in earnest during the reign of King Magnus Ladulås (1275- 1290).31 We can therefore assume with at least some degree of certainty that he would have had a basic familiarity with general developments in especially Old French literature and with the texts of Chrétien de Troyes and the major romanciers of Chrétien’s generation; one need only remember that Chrétien’s romances were still popular in the time our author would have been in France, towards the end of the thirteenth century. 32 In the case of Yvain, for instance, many of the surviving manuscripts and manuscript fragments postdate 1250, attesting to that romance’s continued popularity. In light, then, of an author who likely knew and understood both his Old French original and Old French twelfth- and thirteenth-century courtly literature, in general, it seems fairly safe to entertain the notion that both 58 Old Swedish Herr Ivan the additions he makes to his Herr Ivan as well his reductions of Chrétien’s material—such as his elimination of insanity from Laudine’s grief—are mostly calculated and intentional. Though it is tempting to conclude that the Old Swedish poet’s elimination of madness from the description of Laudine’s grief is simply in consonance with his overall tendency to shorten and to eliminate the unessential, such a conclusion is not in harmony with the poet’s attitude towards emotion in the rest of the text, where there does not exist such a tendency to limit intense feeling or, significantly, the suggestion of madness.33 This is especially evident in that other segment of the romance where, in Chrétien’s original, madness had figured most centrally. I refer specifically to where Laudine’s messenger-maiden delivers to Yvain news of her lady’s desire to break off her union with the hero, who has overstayed the year’s leave she had granted him to engage in tournaments. Importantly, the Old Swedish poet does not reduce the intense feelings of fear, loneliness, and utter despair that Yvain/Ivan experiences following this break-up with Laudine and during his subsequent descent into madness and nakedness in the forest. Thus in the Old French original we learn that, upon hearing the message and on his way to the forest, Yvain ran from the company of other members of the court, “Lors se li monte uns torbeillons /el chief, si grant quë il forsane” [Then such a great whirlwind arose in his head that he went mad] (vv. 2808-09). For its part, the Old Swedish text—after already intimating that Ivan has lost “baþe vit ok sinne” [both his wits and mind] (v. 2177)—informs its audience in the corresponding passage that “Ovit hans hiærna sva fordref / þæt al sin klæþe han af sik ref” [Madness attacked his mind in such wise that he tore off all his clothes] (v. 2185). Furthermore, the Old Swedish text retains the language of madness that characterizes the rest of Chrétien’s original version of Yvain’s descent into the emotional abyss of the forest.34 Thus to the hermit who helps Ivan survive his woodland ordeal, Ivan is “en galen man” [a madman] (vv. 2220 and 2248), and to the Countess of Noroison and her ladies-in waiting who discover him in his insane state, it is apparent that he has lost “baþe vit ok sinne” [both his wits and mind] (v. 2177 and v. 2310), that “Ovit hans hiærna . . . fordref” [Madness attacked his mind] (v. 2185), and that he is “en galin man” [a madman] (v. 2364), whose “ørsl” [madness] (v. 2376) can only be cured with Morgan’s ointment.35 Ivan’s descent into madness is interesting not only because it Old Swedish Herr Ivan 59 indicates that the Old Swedish poet is comfortable imbuing characters with insanity where he thinks appropriate but also because this portion of the text forms a kind of set-piece with the description of Laudine’s mourning. Although Ivan’s mourning does not follow the most typical conventions of the lament, and in particular those associated with female characters (for example, pulling out hair, beating the breasts, lamenting a dead lover), his descent into madness is nevertheless a type of mourning. Indeed, he is essentially working out emotionally the loss of a lover, Laudine, who has passed out of his life much in the way a lover does who dies. His lament, moreover, is not contained solely in the forest-madness episode but continues until he again comes to the Landuc spring and contemplates suicide. That Ivan’s (and Yvain’s) mourning is unconventional should not dissuade us from reading it as a component to the set-piece of mourning made up also of Laudine’s more conventional, feminine lament. Indeed, in one of the more significant observations of her work on mourning, Elke Koch brings into question the more traditional scholarly view of mourning as feminine. She concludes instead, “dass Trauer auch für die Konstitution männlicher Identität zentral ist.”36 Her observation is particularly valid for the hero of the Ywain romances, whose mourning defines his identity as a knight who has lost the woman most dear to him (and who has lost also his personal honor) and who must now crawl back romantically, socially, and politically from the absolute bottom.37 That the Old Swedish author decides to fully retain madness in the hero’s mourning but that he chooses to eliminate it from Laudine’s performance of grief, suggests that while he felt Ivan’s madness would illustrate effectively the profoundness of Ivan’s fall, he feared madness in Laudine’s case inappropriate.38 Indeed, in restraining the emotional spectrum of her lament, in excising explicit insanity from her mourning, he presents his audience with a less emotional character who never fully loses her reason and who, therefore, is arguably more capable of making the all-important political decision of choosing a husband. The relative equanimity of Old Swedish Laudine’s emotional state and her arguably greater capacity vis-à-vis Chrétien’s heroine to make the tale’s most important decision of state is also visible in the manner she chooses to accept Ivan and to consider him as a potential husband. In the Old French original, Laudine had agreed not to kill Yvain and to marry him only after—that is, on condition—that he first justify his slaying of Esclados. She states, “Or le me dites, / si soiez de l’amande quites, / se vos de rien 60 Old Swedish Herr Ivan me mesfeïstes, / qant vos mon seignor m’oceïstes?” [Now tell me, and be forgiven the punishment, how you did me no wrong when you killed my husband?] (vv. 1999-2002). By comparison, in the Old Swedish rewriting, Laudine offers Ivan her protection and hints at a potential life with her in marriage before the hero has justified the Red Knight’s killing or, as Hunt has noted, has pledged to defend her realm.39 Laudine assures the hero, “Man skal Iþer ængte vald hær gøra; / um Guþ vil at iak ma liva / I skulin nær mik mæþ fryghþinne bliva” [No one shall harm you here; if God grants me to live, you shall remain with me with joy] (vv. 1484-86). Thus, the Old Swedish text rejects the conditional and the forced benevolent act, and, in an action that works to establish Laudine’s psychological maturity and her fitness to exercise power and to make a critical political decision, the Old Swedish version allows Laudine to act out of good will. It is perhaps noteworthy that the unconditional nature of Laudine’s acceptance of Ivan is consistent with the actions of positive characters throughout Herr Ivan, where individuals act more often out of good will, and less out of a sense of pressure, than they had in the Old French text. Thus, for instance, subordinate characters in Herr Ivan offer service to their future lord, that is, Ivan, before that lord has pledged or fully demonstrated his protective assistance, and the hero urges mercy for his foes in advance of fighting them and before handing them over to local authorities.40 Such elimination of the conditional serves important characterological purposes in Herr Ivan. For instance, in the elimination in Herr Ivan of conditional language surrounding the hero’s agreement to leave Landuc to ride in tournaments, Gawain undergoes an important rehabilitation vis-à-vis Chrétien’s original character. Thus in the Old French, Gauvain had conditioned his continued friendship with Yvain on the hero’s consent to ride with him in tournaments, warning, “Gardez quë en vos ne remoingne, / biax conpainz, nostre conpaignie” [See to it that our friendship does not end, fair companion, because of you] (vv. 2514-15). In the Old Swedish version, by contrast, the conditional disappears, with its Gavian stating in the corresponding passage, “iak vil daghlik hos Iþer blivæ / baþæ i lust ok sva i nøþ; / os ma eigh skilliæ utan døþ” [I shall always remain with you both in sickness and in health; nothing can part us save death] (vv. 1964-66). Certainly the most visible example of Herr Ivan’s tendency to reduce the conditional, however, is its reformulation and utter neutralization of Old Swedish Herr Ivan 61 the rash-boon by which Yvain secures Laudine’s permission to engage in tournaments with Gauvain away from Landuc. Whereas in the Old French original the lady does not know what the hero will request of her when she grants the boon (vv. 2551-67), in the Old Swedish rewriting, Ivan informs her exactly of what he wants before she grants, unconditionally, that favor (vv. 1985-97). In highlighting here and elsewhere the unconditional act, in making it a consistent thematic focus in his text, it is probable that the Old Swedish author intended to impart to his audience both the propriety, especially for those exercising power, of acting out of voluntary goodness as well as the moral uncertainty of compelling others to do one’s will. In connection to an arguably more positively drawn Laudine in the beginning phases of the narrative, it is probably also worth noting the positive nature of her last gesture as ruler before passing the scepter to her husband. In an important passage without parallel in the Old French original, Old Swedish Laudine explicitly acknowledges the right of her counselor-vassals to rule beside their political leader when, in assembly with them, she stands—visually signaling her deference for her subjects—and proclaims, “I Iþart vald þa giver iak mik” [I place myself in your power] (v. 1620), and then asks them to become Ivan’s men (vv. 1621-22). For their part, the counselor-knights intimate the correctness of a leader behaving in such a manner and ruling in conjunction with (and not over) her vassals when they “þakkaþo þe frughe innelik / þæt hon vilde sva øþmiuka sik” [thanked their mistress sincerely, because she wanted to humble herself] (v v. 1635-36). Viewed through the lens of gender, moreover, the Old Swedish poet might be seen here as restoring the proper male-female power dynamic that was upset upon the Red Knight’s death and by Laudine’s subsequent assumption of the role of decision-maker in Landuc. By having her explicitly place herself in her (male) nobles’ power and by having her ask those nobles to serve a man, Ivan, and not herself, the poet sends the message that the ideal gender relationship in a polity is one in which men rule and their wives support them.

Herr Ivan and the Contemporaneous Swedish Political Situation As we have seen, in its development of both Laudine and her husband(s), Herr Ivan shows itself to be a text greatly concerned with politics. Indeed, in its definition of Laudine’s husband’s role as more the political leader of 62 Old Swedish Herr Ivan a country than the defender of mere custom, in the lady of Landuc’s more restrained emotional state in Herr Ivan vis-à-vis in Yvain, in Laudine’s willing concession of power to her nobles, and in the text’s presentation of powerful figures bestowing favors upon others without conditions, we see an Old Swedish adaptation that is more concerned with presenting its audience with a model of ideal political leadership than Chrétien’s contestably more ambiguous original version had been. Given the prominence of the political horizon in the romance, it is perhaps justified then to speculate briefly on how the contemporaneous political situation in Sweden might have influenced Herr Ivan. It is, of course, always a dangerous enterprise to seek parallels between fictional works and actual historical developments. This is especially true for those works originating in medieval Sweden. As Philip Lane observes in his compendious new study of the political history of high medieval Sweden, we have—perhaps because of Sweden’s geographically isolated location in the North of Europe and its late Christianization (in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries)—relatively few written records dating from before 1300, with the “written evidence for the period prior to 1250” especially poor.41 Nevertheless, the historical record is clear enough to allow us to identify several developments that likely influenced Herr Ivan and its program to present a model of government. The thirteenth century in Sweden was a period marked by the vying of various leading families for a share of power in the country. The era also saw the emergence of an increasingly visible and powerful central monarchy. Much of the political development in the century before the appearance of Herr Ivan in 1303 revolved around the struggle of those families and the king to work out a system that allowed both a strong voice in the decision-making process and an appropriate amount of the country’s wealth. Conflict among the various factions during the thirteenth century was fairly incessant and rebellions against the monarchy frequent up to about 1290.42 It probably doesn’t go too far to imagine that the negative association left in the Swedish collective consciousness of recent political strife with warfare might have influenced the Herr Ivan poet to promote political harmony in his romance. Despite the unrest of the thirteenth century, however, the general political outcome in the period is something of a success story. Indeed, by the end of the tenure of Magnus Ladulås, who reigned from 1275 to 1290, Old Swedish Herr Ivan 63

Sweden had achieved a reasonably workable distribution of power, in which the king was a relatively strong central monarch but in which a small group of leading nobles had a great deal of wealth and political influence. Thus, for instance, while the election of kings in much of Europe had by this time become mostly symbolic and ceremonial, in Sweden the election of kings remains a functioning noble right.43 We perhaps see a reflection in Herr Ivan of the Swedish nobility’s very real voice in approving a sovereign when Laudine explicitly puts herself under her nobles’ authority and asks her people to become Ivan’s men (vv. 1619-36). Critical to the realization of an acceptable power arrangement in late-thirteenth-century Sweden was the institution of a feudal system along the familiar lines of similar systems in Western and Central Europe. In Sweden, that system received much of its legal formulation in the so-called statute of Alsnö from about 1285,44 which, as Gisela Vilhelmsdotter has noted, was promulgated within two decades of the 1303 composition of Herr Ivan.45 Among its central effects, the statute helped establish a feudal aristocracy that was free of royal taxes and which rendered service to its king in the form of military service of the mounted, knightly type.46 Thus, by the last quarter of the thirteenth century, continental chivalric practices were becoming, as Stephen A. Mitchell has noted, well known in Sweden.47 In other words, there is the rather sudden appearance in Sweden of a feudal- courtly class, of the type that had formed the target audiences for courtly literature on the continent since the early twelfth century. One can only presume that this class in Sweden, at the time of Herr Ivan’s writing, still sensed that the feudalized system and its attendant social practices were new and perhaps even foreign. Thus it is probably within the context of the Swedish nobility’s grappling with such monumental change that Herr Ivan’s focus on the political best can be understood. Indeed, its representation of appropriate socio-political conduct within a feudal- courtly milieu likely has much to do with an authorial agenda to educate his Swedish audience, in much the way a manual of conduct might,48 on how to live successfully in a feudalized world. Also important for the realization of effective cooperation between nobility and monarchy in a newly feudalized Sweden was the role of the Church. In contrast to many other nascent European states in the High Middle Ages where the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular authorities was often characterized by sharply conflicting interests and 64 Old Swedish Herr Ivan intense discord (for example, in England and in the Holy Roman Empire), the relationship between Church and state in thirteenth- and fourteenth- century Sweden was symbiotic and relatively harmonious. In short, the Church needed the king to help spread the newly adopted religion, Christianity, among his nobles, and the king needed the Church to supply justification for him to rule. To provide such justification, the Church successfully imported into Sweden the ideology of Christian kingship that had developed on the continent since the Carolingian period. By the late thirteenth century, that ideology—of the rex iustus and the via regia— had penetrated Sweden thoroughly. It promoted the notions that the just sovereign lead an exemplary Christian life and observe, among other royal virtues, justice, mercy, clemency, and humility.49 In our poet’s redrawing of Laudine in the Landuc section we see perhaps a reflection of how far such ideals had permeated medieval Sweden. Thus, for instance, in accepting Ivan as husband before he has justified the Red Knight’s killing or pledged to defend her realm (vv. 1484- 86)—that is, while Ivan is still an outlaw—Old Swedish Laudine epitomizes the royal virtues of clemency and mercy. And in humbling herself before her nobles when asking them to approve Ivan as their lord (vv. 1620-36), she demonstrates the humility appropriate to the just monarch. Such humility is also evident in the portrayal of Old Swedish Laudine after she has formally passed sovereignty to Ivan, namely, in the unconditional nature of the boon she grants Ivan to allow him to engage in a year of tournaments (vv. 1985-97).

A Seriously Flawed Laudine In those aspect’s of Old Swedish Laudine’s behavior that I have detailed to this point, we see a poetic agenda that includes presenting a figure who might serve as a model of socio-political conduct for both male and female members of the noble audience. That we should absolutely view Laudine’s behavior as instructional for female audience members—that is, that the Old Swedish poet considered women as important constituents of his audience—is suggested by the somewhat greater presence of female figures in Herr Ivan than in Yvain. Indeed, in Herr Ivan, women, or what we might call the ‘community of ladies’, are noticeably more visible, with women characters playing an even more active role than they had in Chrétien’s original. In the interest of space, I’ll mention here just a few Old Swedish Herr Ivan 65 illustrative examples of this point from the first third of tale. Thus, when Arthur retreats at the very beginning of the story with Guinevere into his chambers to rest, the Old Swedish version adds that they were joined there by “fruor ok mør ok høviske qvinna” [ladies, maidens, and courtly women] (v. 68), and similarly when Kalogrevanz returns to his host after his defeat by the Red Knight, the Old Swedish text appends that he was honored there by “fruor ok mør ok høviske qvinna” [ladies and maidens and courtly women] (v. 522). Further, when Laudine requests her noble’s acceptance of Ivan as husband, it is not just the male barons of Chrétien’s original who urge her to marry the hero, but rather “Þa svaraþe riddare ok svæne ok þærne: ‘Hvat I biuþen þæt gørom vi giærnæ’” [Knights and squires and maidens (my emphasis ) then answered: “What you bid, we gladly do”] (vv. 1623-24). Moreover, when Ivan goes mad following news that Laudine has broken off their union, it is not just the general “genz” [people] (v. 2812) of Chrétien’s original who notice he has disappeared and go to seek him, but rather, in the Old Swedish adaptation, “baþæ karl ok qvinnæ” [both men and women (my emphasis)] (v. 2195) go to find him. And following Luneta’s assistance in helping Ivan gain Laudine’s consent to marriage, and as if to advocate female agency in the world of the court, the Old Swedish text innovates by adding the authorial aside,

Nu haver Luneta fræmt sin vilia. Þæt raþer iak allom þær lønlik vilia gilia, þe havi þær staþlika akt up a hvat Luneta giorþe honum, gøre ok sva ok lyþe raþ af stolta qvinna.

[Luneta has now accomplished her will. I advise everyone who wants to woo secretly to pay close attention to what Luneta accomplished for him. Do likewise, and follow the advice of noble women] (vv. 1541-45).50 Although the Old Swedish poet thus seems interested in presenting an image of a courtly feudal world where women play an active and positive role, his Laudine character is not totally exemplary in how she negotiates her way in that environment. While the poet indeed presents in his Landuc section a Laudine who is perhaps better equipped to wield political power and to make a critical state decision than her Old French counterpart had been, and while he draws a figure who demonstrates more fully 66 Old Swedish Herr Ivan royal virtues like clemency, mercy, and humility, he nevertheless makes a most serious fault an essential component of her character. Specifically, throughout much of Herr Ivan, Laudine’s behavior is characterized by pride. For audiences of medieval courtly literature the suggestion of pride was a signal of the most serious moral deficiency. As Richard Newhauser has noted, pride had gained by the Early Middle Ages the position as “the chief sin” for Christians. 51 Thus Thomasin von Zerklaere will be able remind the audience of his early-thirteenth-century courtesy book, Der Welsche Gast, that they are engaged in “einn rîterlîchen strît” [a knightly battle] in which “Hôhvart rîtet, daz ist wâr, / ze vorderst (my emphasis) an der êrsten schar” [pride rides, indeed, up front in the lead battalion] of the Army of the Vices.52 According to Newhauser, pride’s ascendant hegemony over the other Vices in the early medieval period lay in the fact that during this age of nascent feudalism in Western and continental Europe the small amount of wealth available was mostly in the form of land, and that land increasingly was concentrated in the hands of a small aristocracy. Such narrow concentration of wealth, and the disproportionate political power it gave the feudal, military aristocracy, was out of accord with the ideals of a corporate society that regarded individualism suspiciously. Thus the rise of pride as chief sin would seem to be a reaction against, and a message for, an increasingly powerful, and presumably arrogant, feudal elite.53 Pride manifested in a noble leader like Laudine would, arguably, be especially relevant to Herr Ivan’s early-fourteenth-century Swedish audience. The feudal system based on land tenure that had been ushered in briskly during the decades preceding the appearance of the romance had created sudden, marked, and noticeable differences in the amount of wealth and attendant power held by various nobles and their families. In portraying a powerful Laudine grappling with pride, we see perhaps an unconscious reflex on the part of our poet against the concentration of power in the hands of a small elite and a questioning of the extent to which members of that narrowing group should be sure of themselves. We have the first intimation that Laudine’s superbia will become one of her chief personality traits and that pride will play a critical part in the narrative when Luneta brings Ivan forth from his hiding place to speak with Laudine for the first time. Luneta upbraids her mistress for not greeting the hero: “Iþart hoghmoþ mon Iþer svika, / at I lætin ængin vara Iþan lika” [Your arrogance may betray you, in that you let no one be your Old Swedish Herr Ivan 67 equal] (v. 1463-64). It is later, however, after Ivan has departed Landuc to go on tournament, that the negative consequences and gravity of Laudine’s pride manifest themselves most fully. While in Yvain and, for example, in its Middle High German rewriting, Hartmann’s Iwein, the responsibility for the hero’s failure to keep his promise and return to Laudine is arguably spread among the story’s four most central characters—that is, among the hero, Gawain, Laudine, and Lunete—to such an extent that it is probably unwarranted to lay the guilt for the hero’s troubles at any particular character’s feet,54 Herr Ivan allots to Laudine a disproportionately large share of blame for Ivan’s continuing misfortunes after he has overstayed his year’s leave from Landuc. And that blame is inextricably connected to her pride. Thus, on the occasion of Ivan’s tragic descent into madness after Laudine’s decision to effectively annul their marriage, the narrator, in an obvious reference to Laudine’s guilt in that fall, remarks of women, “slikt fanger man for stolta qvinnæ; / þera hoghmoþ ær alt ofbald, / þær þe giva þolik þiænista giald” [That is what happens because of haughty women; their arrogance is too great, when they give such reward for service] (v. 2178-80). 55 Moreover, towards the end of the romance, when Ivan has resolved to return to Laudine, the text again reminds us of the centrality of her excessive pride as an impediment to their reconciliation. The narrator affirms, “Vil hon sit hoghmoþ eigh forlata / han vil hænne sva sarlika hata” [If she will not renounce her arrogance, he (i.e. Ivan) will harass her so persistently] (vv. 6049-50). And the Old Swedish Laudine character, too, unwittingly suggests her fault in prolonging the hero’s misery. Thus on the occasion of Ivan’s victory over Luneta’s seneschal-accuser and his brothers, Laudine tells the hero—whose actual identity is unknown to her—that,

Þe frugha þænker eigh ræt up a þær þolikin riddara vil forsma, hvat han hafþe hænne giort a mot þær matte han væl raþa a bot, þæt kunne eigh væl sva mykit væra þæt hon þær æptir skulde kæra.

[Your lady does not realize—who is willing to scorn such a knight—that what he has done to her he could make up for; this could not be so bad that she would continue to be offended] (vv. 3831-36). 68 Old Swedish Herr Ivan

In stark contrast, Old French Laudine, who also initially voices the opinion that the hero’s lady is behaving discourteously in refusing to reconcile with him, qualifies that sentiment, and thereby largely exculpates herself of guilt, when she remarks of the Knight of the Lion’s mistress that “Ne deüst pas veher sa porte / a chevalier de vostre pris / se trop n’eüst vers li mespris” [She should not close her door to a knight of your renown unless (my emphasis) he has grievously offended her] (vv. 4598-600). In attaching pride so centrally to Laudine’s character, the Old Swedish poet accomplishes several tasks. Viewed from the point of view of gender, for instance, Laudine’s exercise of pride—which stalls the narrative action and causes the reunion of Laudine and Ivan to occur much later than, arguably, would have been optimal—serves as a reminder to female audience members to avoid pride and to forgive even major faults in their husbands. For the more general audience, including especially male audience members who exercised political privileges, the powerful Laudine’s pride contrasts with that humility she had shown earlier in dealing with her nobles and which was more in accord with the ideals of the rex iustus. Also of great importance, is how Laudine’s performance of pride works to put Ivan in a better light. By making Laudine’s husband more the actual ruler of the land than he had been in Chrétien’s Yvain, the Old Swedish poet arguably had increased the magnitude of his transgression in overstaying the leave granted him by Laudine. Thus, his fall in Herr Ivan becomes more profound than it had been in Yvain. However, by making Laudine’s pride a prime mover of Ivan’s problems, by placing a great share of guilt in her corner for prolonging the reconciliation of the pair, the poet shifts much of the blame that had attached to the hero in Chrétien’s text away from his own Ivan. This shift is central to the Old Swedish adapter’s overall recasting of the hero, who, unlike Chrétien’s Yvain—a figure who starts as an immature individual and progresses during the tale to ideal knightly status—starts the romance as more of a full-fledged, mature knight, worthy of audience admiration and emulation.

Conclusions In the Old Swedish poet’s redrawing of Laudine, in his presentation of a more emotionally restrained character than her Old French exemplar character had been, we have a single but nevertheless important example Old Swedish Herr Ivan 69 of the Herr Ivan poet’s willingness to alter his source material to achieve his own unique narrative aims. By expunging the association of Laudine’s grief with madness, by making her a figure who bestows favor upon her potential husband less conditionally, and by allowing her to be more deferential toward her nobles, the Old Swedish poet arguably equips his heroine better to make a crucial state decision, the selection of a husband to be future leader of her realm. Despite such positive treatment, however, the Old Swedish poet imbues his Laudine with a significant flaw, namely, pride—a sin against which he likely intended to warn all members of his audience.

1. This essay originated as a paper, “Emotion and the Establishment of Power in the Old Swedish Hærra Ivan,” delivered at the 2003 International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK, in the Society for Medieval German Studies session organized by Ernst Ralf Hintz. — I thank Anne Marie Rasmussen for making me aware of several sources that proved useful in the preparation of this article. 2. For Eufemiavisor patronage, see, for instance, William Thomas Layher, “Queen Eufemia’s Legacy: Middle Low German Literary Culture, Royal Patronage, and the First Old Swedish Epic (1301),” diss., Harvard U, 1999, e.g. vii-x and 199-251. 3. About the position of Herr Ivan and the Eufemiavisor within the medieval Swedish literary tradition, see esp. Stephen A. Mitchell, “The Middle Ages,” A History of Swedish Literature, ed. Lars G. Warme (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1996) 17-32. 4. Verse references, original text, and English translations from Herr Ivan are from Henrik Williams and Karin Palmgren, eds. and trans., Norse Romance Volume III: Hærra Ivan, series ed. Marianne E. Kalinke (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1999), who base their normalized edition on the standard edition by Erik Noreen, ed., Herr Ivan: kritisk upplaga (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells boktrykeri, 1931). Verse references, original text, and English translations from Yvain are from Chrétien de Troyes, The Knight with the Lion or Yvain (Le Chevalier au Lion), ed. and trans. William W. Kibler (New York, NY: Garland, 1985). Verse references, original text, and English translations from Iwein are from German Romance Volume III: Hartmann von Aue, Iwein or The Knight with the Lion, ed. and trans. Cyril Edwards (Woodbridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2007). Verse references and original text from Ywain and Gawain are from Albert B. Friedman and Norman T. Harrington, eds., 70 Old Swedish Herr Ivan

Ywain and Gawain (London: Oxford UP, 1964), while translations into modern English are my own. Page references for Ívens saga are from Foster W. Blaisdell, ed., Ívens saga (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel, 1979). 5. The most important piece of post-war Herr Ivan scholarship and a study that summarizes much previous philological research as well as provides a global interpretation of the text is the article by Tony Hunt, “Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 8 (1975): 168-86. 6. In the interest of space, I do not include here a detailed discussion of Herr Ivan research. For a very brief summary through 2008 of that scholarship and of the major scholarly debates surrounding the text—including the not very convincing argument that Herr Ivan relies on a saga version of tale, i.e. Ívens saga, as its primary exemplar—see my companion piece to this essay, “Rewriting the Exercise of Power in the Landuc Segment of the Old Swedish Hærra Ivan and Chrétien’s Yvain,” Neophilogus 93,1 (2009): 19-37. 7. About the poet’s development of these central themes, see my “Youth and Older Age in the Dire Adventure of Chrétien’s Yvain, the Old Swedish Hærra Ivan, Hartmann’s Iwein and the Middle English Ywain and Gawain,” The European Dimensions of Arthurian Literature, ed. Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2007) 104-20 and my “Rewriting the Exercise of Power.” 8. While conceding some of the narrative similarities observed by previous scholars (e.g. Gustav Ehrismann) between the Old Swedish and Middle High German versions, Valter Jansson, Eufemiavisorna: en filologisk undersökning (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1945) 44-45, dismisses, I think correctly, the hypothesis that Iwein had any kind of significant influence on the composition of Herr Ivan. 9. For Hartmann’s rehabilitation of noble counsel, see J. M. Sullivan, “The Lady Lunete: Literary Conventions of Counsel and the Criticism of Counsel in Chrétien’s Yvain and Hartmann’s Iwein,” Neophilologus 85 (2001): 335-54. About the Old Swedish text’s positive appraisal of noble advice, see my “Rewriting the Exercise of Power,” pp. 28-32. 10. About the redrawing of these characters in the Middle High German version, see Joseph M. Sullivan, “Kalogreant/Calogrenant, Space, and Communication in Hartmann’s Iwein and Chrétien’s Yvain,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 42,1 (2006): 1-14. For his part, the Old Swedish poet eliminates, for instance, the reluctant, rude, and dismissive language that Chrétien’s Calogrenant had showered upon him by the herdsman, who tells the warrior, for example, “faudras tu bien” [you will surely fail] (v. 367). Instead, he allows his herdsman to respond willingly and respectfully to the hero’s request for information (vv. 345-82) and even permits the herdsman to bid the knight a courteous farewell (v. 383). Indeed, the interaction between the Arthurian hero and the herdsman becomes one of mutual understanding, just as it does in Hartmann’s version. Old Swedish Herr Ivan 71

11. For instance, at the very beginning of the tale, both the Old Swedish version (vv. 61- 69) and Hartmann’s text (vv. 77-85) present a more independent Arthur as voluntarily choosing to go to his chambers to sleep with Guinevere. In Chrétien’s original, by contrast, Guinevere is described as actively detaining Arthur there and causing him to fall asleep (vv. 42-52), which Chrétien perhaps hoped would create the suspicion early on in his romance that Guinevere ‘wears the pants’ in the royal marriage. 12. See Sullivan, “Youth and Older Age in the Dire Adventure” 110-17. While both Old Swedish and Middle High German adaptations considerably modify and expand Chrétien’s treatment also of older age in the Dire Adventure portion of the tale, Herr Ivan makes that age of life particularly positive while Iwein assumes an interested but nevertheless largely neutral stance toward older age. 13. About Hartmann’s rehabilitation of Gawain as counselor vis-à-vis Chrétien’s original, see Tony Hunt, “Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: Some Interpretative Problems in Chrétien’s Yvain and Its Medieval Adaptations,” The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, ed. Leigh A. Arrathoon (Rochester, MI: Solaris P, 1984) 96-101. As does Hartmann, the Old Swedish poet (vv. 1952-80) excises much of the more insulting and contestably ridiculous language from Gawain’s important advice. 14. About Hartmann’s more positively drawn Lunete, see my “The Lady Lunete,” 335-54. For a more recent treatment of Hartmann’s Lunete and for a challenge to my claim that Hartmann extensively rehabilitates noble counsel, see Evelyn Meyer, “Gender erasures, knightly maidens and (un)knightly knights in Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein,” Neophilologus 91 (2007): 657-672, esp. 667. As Meyer (662) points out, Hartmann alone among the major adaptors of Yvain characterizes Lunete positively as a “knightly maiden” [rîterlîche maget]. — Clearly for Herr Ivan, the lion’s share of work has yet to be done on the Old Swedish poet’s adaptations of the characters and major themes he received from Chrétien and how those adaptations compare to those of the other medieval redactors of the Ywain material. It is hoped that Sofia Lodén will address some of these issues in the recently undertaken Ph.D. dissertation she is writing jointly at the University of Stockholm and the University of Provence. 15. While the Herr Ivan manuscripts never specifically refer to her by name, I follow scholarly convention and refer to Ivan’s wife as Laudine. 16. For Hartmann’s adaptation of Chrétien’s Laudine, see especially the seminal study by Volker Mertens, Laudine. Soziale Problematik im Iwein Hartmanns von Aue (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1978). 17. I refer to this segment as the “Landuc” section after the name in the Old French text of the area where the action takes place. 18. Yvain (vv. 410-2181), Herr Ivan (vv. 387-1664). 72 Old Swedish Herr Ivan

19. Sullivan, “Rewriting the Exercise of Power” esp. 22-25. 20. Yvain refers to the defense of the fountain or custom at vv. 1627-28, 1852-54, 2037- 38, and 2106 and refers to the peril faced by the land or country and to its defense at vv. 1619, 1809-10, 2085-91, and 2474-79. Similarly, Ívens saga (pp. 42, 44, 49, 60, & 65-66) also refers just as often to custom and the defense of a spring as it does to the rulership of a country. While Hartmann arguably increases vis-à-vis Chrétien the seriousness of the husband’s role by avoiding the language of custom in the Landuc section, he nevertheless follows Chrétien in referring alternately to the fountain (vv. 1820, 1825, 1837, 1849, 1854, 2055, 2161, 2405, 2445, 2541, 2642, and 2673) and to the land (vv. 1767, 1820, 1854, 1900, 1906, 1910, 2164, 2308, 2316, 2360, 2416, 2433, 2443, 2609, 2642, 2776, 2874, 2883, and 2930). 21. vv. 1184-88, 1189-92, 1201-02, 1313-14, 1361-64, 1367-72, 1523-26, 1528-29, 1581-82, 1596, and 1661-64. — In also avoiding all reference to custom, in referring to the fountain explicitly only twice (vv. 1081 and 1268), and by instead referring again and again to land and country (vv. 949, 952, 958, 1170, 1185, 1212, 1216, and 1445), the Middle English Ywain and Gawain seems to be following a similar strategy as Herr Ivan with its foregrounding of rulership and defense of an actual realm as the husband’s prime responsibilities. Like Herr Ivan, the Middle English adaptation drives that point further home by repeatedly characterizing Laudine’s husband as an actual lord or ruler (e.g. “lord” [vv. 1147, 1230, 1263, 1379, and 1557]; “governowre” [v. 1222]). 22. April Lynn Henry, “The Female Lament: Agency and Gender in Medieval German Literature,” diss., U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008, 6 and 7. 23. See, for example, Henry 14. 24. Elke Koch, Trauer und Identität. Inszenierungen von Emotionen in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006) 284. Although Koch’s comments refer primarily to diversity in representations of mourning among independent courtly tales, I feel we can extend her observations also to adaptations of courtly works into other languages. 25. William Ian Miller, Humiliation and Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993) 108. 26. Barbara Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2006) e.g. 2. 27. See, for example, Hunt, “Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren” 173. 28. Herr Ivan totals 6,446 and Yvain 6,825 verses, respectively. 29. See Iwein (vv. 1297-1686). — For its part, the Middle English Ywain and Gawain is very sparing in its reference to madness as part of Laudine’s grief, mentioning it only once, i.e. “For mekyl wa sho was nere wode” [On account of great woe she was nearly mad] (v. 822). Old Swedish Herr Ivan 73

Since Ywain and Gawain, at over 2,000 verses shorter than Chrétien’s Yvain, significantly abridges that source text, it seems unwarranted to see an active strategy to minimize the significance of madness in Laudine’s grief where the poet might have wished simply to avoid repetition. 30. See, for instance, Mitchell 21-22. 31. About Church officials increasingly traveling to France in this period for their education, see Philip Lane, Kingship and State Formation in Sweden, 1130-1290 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 381. — The one reasonable possibility that scholarship has put forth as a possible Herr Ivan author is Magnus Ladulås’s chancellor Peter Algotsson (see Mitchell 21-22) who not only studied in Paris himself but was also brother of the powerful Bishop of Skara, Brynolf Algotsson, who likewise, as Lane (381) notes, had spent “many years in Paris.” 32. For the continuing popularity of Chrétien’s romances and their influence on French Arthurian verse romance throughout the thirteenth-century, see especially the important study by Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart, trans. Margaret and Roger Middleton (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998). As Schmolke-Hasselmann, 10, notes, “The Arthurian romances of the thirteenth century supply variants to the basic pattern [established by Chrétien], although generally without exploiting extreme situations or speculative elaborations.” 33. The Old Swedish poet, however, in his version which at 6,446 verses is nearly 400 lines shorter than his Old French exemplar, does curtail greatly Chrétien’s theoretical discussions and psychological and sentimental reflections about the vicissitudes of love, hate, etc. Among the many scholars who have noted this, see, for instance, Jansson 36-37 and Karin Boklund Coffer, “Herr Ivan: A Stylistic Study,” Scandinavian Studies 48 (1976): 303-05, who opines, 309, “The foremost virtue of Herr Ivan, in both style and narrative, is a predilection for the concrete and the striking.” 34. The other passages from this section where Yvain speaks of the hero’s madness include vv. 2832, 2835-38, 2930-32, 2933-37, and 2992-93. 35. Interestingly, Old Swedish Laudine uses the language of insanity to upbraid Luneta when the latter recommends she wed her husband’s killer. Laudine calls her lady-in- waiting “baþe galin ok øræ” [both mad and crazy] (v. 1275). — In assigning madness to the hero’s fall, but in omitting it from Laudine’s grief, the Old Swedish adaptation parallels Hartmann’s. Thus Hartmann’s text, which also avoids including explicit reference to madness in Laudine’s grief, mentions several times Iwein’s lost of “den sin” [his mind] (here v. 3209; also vv. 3283, 3393, and 3491). 36. Koch 286. While Koch analyses specifically the Middle High German courtly corpus, I think her conclusion here is applicable also to the European high medieval courtly corpus in general. 74 Old Swedish Herr Ivan

37. That the tale’s medieval audiences and adaptors might have understood the hero’s descent into emotional crisis and his near suicide as mourning is suggested by the comparative evidence from Ywain and Gawain. Here we learn that Ywain, upon hearing the message that his wife wants nothing more to do with him, “In sorow þan so was he stad, / þat nere for murni[n]g [my emphasis] wex he mad” [was then so beset by sorrow, that on account of mourning he became nearly mad] (v. 1639-40). 38. Interestingly, the Old Swedish poet shows how comfortable he is in depicting madness as a part of grief where he thinks appropriate when he assigns madness to yet another mourning male character, effectively establishing also that figure’s full identity as a loyal being. Thus, when the lion believes his beloved master has died, Herr Ivan, in a departure from Yvain, notes that the lion in its distress, “lop ater ok fram þæræ, / sum hon monde galin [my emphasis] væræ” [ran back and forth as if it were crazy] (vv. 2841-42). 39. Hunt, “Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren” 176. 40. In contrast to Yvain’s lion, Herr Ivan’s lion submits to the hero before he has chopped off the animal’s tail and thereby saved him (vv. 2691-738); Laudine’s knight-counselors offer Ivan their service before Laudine’s seneschal makes the case for accepting Ivan as their new lord (vv. 1553-54); Ivan asks his host in advance of the actual fight with Fiælskarper (i.e. Harpin) that the host grant the giant mercy in the event that Fiælskarper loses and then makes amends to the host (vv. 3393-98); Ivan asks the Countess of Noroison “for mina saka” [for my sake] (v. 2669) to grant “Arlans iærl” (i.e. Count Alier) mercy when he hands him over to her (vv. 2647-72). 41. Lane xix and 468. 42. About these developments, see Lane 468-77. 43. Lane 478. 44. Lane 138 surmises this as the possible approximate date. The actual date is unknown. 45. Gisela Vilhelmsdotter, “Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren. En medeltida utvecklingsroman,” Till Barbro. Texter och tolkningar tillägnade Barbro Söderberg den 23 september 1997, ed. Roger Andersson and Patrik Åström (Stockholm: Institutionen för nordiska språk, Stockholms universitet, 1997) 109. Vihelmsdotter’s article, which is non-comparative in nature, is primarily a summary of the action in Herr Ivan. The analysis it provides, 124-27, conforms to what scholars generally feel about the main thematic emphases common to all the European retellings of the Ywain story. 46. Concerning the statute of Alsnö and its role in establishing a secular, feudal nobility, see, for example, Herman Schück, “Sweden under the dynasty of the Folkungs,” Prehistory to 1520, ed. Knut Helle, The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003) 394-400. Old Swedish Herr Ivan 75

47. Mitchell 18-19. 48. Vilhelmsdotter 109 likewise reads Herr Ivan as a handbook on knightly manners. 49. About the relationship between Church and monarchy, just kingship theory, and the importation of that ideology into Sweden, see Lane 365, 376, and 475. 50. This authorial aside probably should also be viewed as part of the poet’s agenda to cast his Luneta in a more favorable light than the arguably more conniving Lunete of Chrétien’s original. 51. Richard Newhauser, The Treatise on Vices and Virtues in Latin and the Vernacular (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1993) 198. 52. Heinrich Rückert, ed., Der Wälsche Gast des Thomasin von Zirclaria (1856; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965) vv. 7444 and 7459-60. 53. Newhauser 198-99. 54. As Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, trans. Janos M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1988) 79 has underscored, medieval people viewed sin as something shared among the community. Chrétien and Hartmann’s apparent distribution of responsibility for Yvain/Iwein’s fall and continuing troubles among several characters is in consonance with such an attitude. That identifying who is responsible for Yvain/Iwein’s problems is, therefore, a somewhat problematic endeavor has not stopped Germanists from trying to do so for Hartmann’s Iwein. See, for example, David Le Sage, “‘Âne zuht’ or ‘âne schulde’”?: The Question of Iwein’s Guilt,” Modern Language Review 77.1 (1982): 99-113. 55. Hunt, “Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren” 183 detects in this passage a possible “touch of anti-feminism.”